"The weak storage results for the August quarter were fairly consistent with reported storage revenues from XRTX’s OEM customers. However, we were surprised by the comments that storage softness across XRTX’s customers remained in the month of September," said analyst Keith Bachman.

He thinks headwinds in both businesses will remain through the first half of 2013, including the continued shift toward in-house manufacturing from Xyratex’s largest storage customer.

"We remain Market Perfrom on XRTX, given the headwinds in both businesses,” said Bachman.

He also noted that Xyratex has been an inconsistent proxy for NetApp (Nasdaq: NTAP) results.

"We think the difference between XRTX’s storage revenue outlook and our forecast for NTAP’s product revenue growth of 10% q/q is due in part to a mix shift from NTAP’s 3000 to the 2000 series, which XRTX does not support," added Bachman.

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